 Have you ever been curious if your posture affects your ability to run or how well you can run, how fast you can run, or maybe you've been curious if your posture is causing some form of joint pain. These are some of the things that I wanna answer in this video, my name is Dr. Molly, and I'm with your Goals Physical Therapy. This is national posture month, I am super excited, and I thought I would do an entire series on how posture can affect different sports.
In this video, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna talk about what posture is, how it directly relates to each individual sport. This week I'm gonna talk about how posture affects running and then some common injury, just to see if you're on the right path. If you're dealing with something yourself, and maybe you have questions about what's going on with you. I'm gonna give two examples of things that can be tied into your posture, like running injuries that can be tied into your posture, and then what you do about that, because why talk about it unless we can come up with a solution to the problem.
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 Is your lower back bothering you while you run? Is your lower back cramping up or just causing severe pain, which is hindering either the distance that you're able to run or just being able to run in general. This video is perfect for you. My name is Dr. Molly, with Your Goals Physical Therapy, and I absolutely love treating runners. Unfortunately, running does come with injuries and over the course of my practice, I have noticed that there are two big things that cause people to have lower back pain while they run.
The first one would be just from the force of hitting the ground. Some people end up with lower back pain, and that ends up being the thing that a lot of doctors tell you, “Hey, you just shouldn't run at all.” And, I have a little bit different take, so stay tuned. Then the other one is when your lower back muscles are doing too much work, they are so strong that they are taking over and they are cramping. They're just so tight and constricted that it's causing you pain.  Hi, I'm Dr. Molly with Your Goals Physical Therapy, hamstring pulls have got to be one of the most frustrating injuries out there. Not that all injuries aren't obnoxious, but it always feels like you pull your hamstring when you hit your stride running. You finally get this good pace going, you know, you're going to beat your prior time for what you're doing that day. And bam, one of your hamstrings, you just feel it pull and now you're walking the rest of the way. Or you're like the guy that I saw at the USA powerlifting meet the other day. He was getting set up to pull 700 pounds, which is why I was paying attention, because that seemed very shocking to me. I was like, whew, 700 pounds. I got to see this. I got to see somebody be able to lift that.
That's impressive. Anybody who's willing to train that hard and for that long is very, very impressive. And so I see him, he gets ready. He gets into his stance. He bends down to pick up the bar and all of a sudden you just see it. He grabs the back of his leg and hops up. (I'm not sure, but there may have been some adult language.) He takes off his lifting belt and he's off the platform there and he never returns. You see him the rest of the time at the meet he's limping. It's very obvious that he injured his hamstring, just getting down into that position. I figured let's talk about how we handle hamstring strains or hamstring pulls, pardon me. That can happen only once, if you're scouring the earth right now, because you just pulled your hamstring and it's never happened before. Or maybe you're falling across this, because you pull your hamstring all the time and you're wondering why.  Hi, I'm Dr. Molly with Your Goals Physical therapy, January is one of my favorite months. This is the month that everybody decides that they want to try to get healthy. They go out and they try to improve their body. They'll pick up a sport. They'll start walking around their neighborhood. They'll join a gym. All these amazing things that are just wonderful for your health and your overall well being. The unfortunate truth is though, whenever you start something new, especially if you haven't done anything recently, or for several years, a lot of people end up with injuries. Over the years I noticed that about February or March, I get a lot of injuries related to running.
In this video, I'm going to talk about five common running injuries that I see and then how to prevent them. Because ultimately what I really enjoy is helping people get and stay active. It is so common to go full force and start a training program and then have an injury. And it breaks my heart. Every time I hear somebody say, “You know, I'm 40, it was bound to happen.”, “I haven't worked out in forever because my knees are bad. (or my back is bad.) And here I went and tried to go running. What was I thinking?” or “Of course I'm not built for running.” Of course, because I'm this age now I wish I hadn’t tried.” This is very sad to hear. Running is an amazing activity. It is true, however, if you have not done anything in a while, running isn't as easy as it was when you were five or six at the age of 40. You need to do a little prep work to make sure that you do not have an injury.  Hi, I'm Dr. Molly with Your Goals Physical Therapy. Let's talk about running. So I absolutely love running. Anybody who has ever gotten the running bug knows how addictive it is. And it is very hard even when you're hurt or injured for you to want to stop running. But what do you do if you have pain and the front of your hip after you're done running, or even during your run, how do you get past that? Having hip pain, especially in the front is very, very common when you're running and honestly, it doesn't even matter if you're new to running or if you’ve been running for a long time, that kind of pain can happen basically whenever. I just wanted talk about this because I have met a wonderful woman, Sarah, who completely was in love with running.
Running has a bad reputation especially as we get older. But really running is an amazing workout! And when done correctly with the proper conditioning it is completely safe. I have helped train a 99 year old to complete a 1 mile down hill run. So Age is not the issue!
But all jokes aside, running is a very intense activity. You are basically doing a single squat over and over again. Lots of people start running as adults to lose weight or get back into shape. And this is why many people struggle with running injuries. They don’t realize that running is not the entry-level exercise. Running requires a lot of strength that we don’t think about. For instance, when was the last time you stood comfortable on one foot? How comfortable are you doing squats? I remember Sally’s face when I asked her those questions. She looked at me like I was crazy. “Why would I stand on one foot? I don’t like squats because they hurt my knees.” Were her answers. Sally called me because her back hurt when she ran and she was scared she herniated a disc.
Shin splints are miserable! Every step you take is painful. But why do they happen?
Shin splints cause pain at the front of your lower leg by the bone that connects your knee to your ankle. Typically shin splints happen when you start a running or walking program. They can also start when you increase your miles or speed. In short, that burning achy sensation is from your ankles being “overworked’. This can be such a frustrating set back. I was talking to Trish the other day. She started a walking program at the start of the lock down just to get out of the house. Then she was able to get into a good rhythm of working out at night after work. She was feeling good making positive changes: weight loss, increased energy, and feeling more calm over all. She was doing so well she decided to start a running program. Everything was going great. She found her rhythm, getting more miles without stopping. THEN BAM! She started to have pain at the front of her lower leg. There’s a brace for basically every body part and injury so they must work, right? In fact, there’s a specific knee brace for patellofemoral syndrome, it helps by preventing your kneecap from leaving its track. Before we talk about whether the brace helps patellofemoral syndrome let’s talk about the symptoms of patellofemoral syndrome. An achy pain on the outside or underneath the kneecap, in addition to, popping or clicking in the knee while walking, running, standing up and sitting down or squatting. Feeling as if you have to bend and straighten your leg to warm up after sitting for longer than 30 minutes. This is not an exhaustive list but those are the common complaints from people with patellofemoral syndrome.  If you’ve had knee pain while you run, I bet you’ve considered running with a brace.
I frequently get asked, “Should I run with a knee brace?” “What if I wrapped my knee up really tight could I run?” “Which brace is a good one?” Rebecca had the same question when I met her. She’d been running with a knee brace for several weeks but found it very concerning that her knee STILL hurt while she was running. She thought she’d bought the wrong type of knee brace.
Everyone who runs wants to know what makes the best running shoe. How your foot hits the ground is very important when you run.
Good shoes can prevent knee, hip and back pain injuries. The difficult thing about shoes is that what makes the shoe good for one person makes it bad for another. So how do you pick the best shoe for you? |
WE HELP ACTIVE ADULTS OVERCOME THEIR ACHES AND PAINS TO GET THEM BACK TO THEIR FAVORITE ACTIVITIES WITHOUT MEDICATION, INJECTIONS OR SURGERIES.
Dr. Molly McDonald
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